---
name: "siege"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "siege"
version: "4.2.0-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/siege"
---

# siege(1)

## NAME

siege is a HTTP/FTP load tester and benchmarking utility.

## SYNOPSIS

```
  siege [options]
  siege [options] <URL>
  siege [options] -g <URL>
  siege [options] -f urls.txt
```

## DESCRIPTION

`siege` is a multi-threaded HTTP/FTP load tester and benchmarking  utility. It supports most of the features detailed in RFCs 2616 (HTTP) and 959 (FTP). Properties can be set both from the command line and in a configuration file. When the same property is set in both locations, the command line takes precedence.

The default configuration file is `$HOME`/.siege/siege.conf If you don't  have a `$HOME`/.siege directory and a siege.conf and cookies.txt file,  siege will generate a new config directory when it runs. You can  generate your config directory with the following command: siege.config

## OPTIONS

### Option Syntax

`siege` supports long and short options. Short options look like this:\
     \-c 25\
     \-c25

Long options look like this:\
     \--concurrent=25

### Option Values

- **-V**, **--version**

  Displays the `siege` release version and copyright information.

- **-h**, **--help**

  Prints a help message describing `siege`'s command-line options.

- **-C**, **--config**

  Prints a detailed summary of all the currently configured options, most of which are sent in `$HOME`/.siege/siege.conf

- **-v**, **--verbose**

  This directive puts `siege` into verbose mode which is actually a  default setting. This command-line option is useful when the config  file is set to 'verbose = false' since it will allow you to override  that.

  By default `siege`'s verbose output is displayed in a color-coded  style.\
     \* HTTP 2xx is coded blue\
     \* HTTP 3xx is coded cyan\
     \* HTTP 4xx is coded magenta\
     \* HTTP 5xx is coded red\
     \* HTTP cached is coded black

  NOTE: You can turn off color in siege.conf like this: 'color = off'

- **-q**, **--quiet**

  This directive silences `siege`. It is mostly used for scripting and  is often used in conjunction with -g/--get. You can detect the success  or failure of the run with its exit code.

  ```
    siege --quiet -g www.joedog.org
    if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
      echo "Success"
    else
      echo "Failure"
    fi
  ```

- **-g URL**, **--get=URL**

  This option allows you to request a URL and watch the header  transaction.  There is a corresponding config file directive that  allows you to set the request method for these requests:  gmethod = HEAD\|GET

  ```
    $ siege -g "https://www.joedog.org/"
    HEAD / HTTP/1.0
    Host: www.joedog.org
    Accept: */*
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (unknown-x86_64-linux-gnu) Siege/4.0.0-beta5
    Connection: close
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: cloudflare-nginx
    Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2016 18:18:41 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    Connection: close
    Last-Modified: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:46:08 GMT
    Cache-Control: max-age=3, must-revalidate
    Expires: Tue, 09 Feb 2016 18:18:44 GMT
    Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
    CF-RAY: 27219407eeff084a-IAD
  ```

  NOTE: It's a best practice to quote the URL when it's passed to `siege`  from the the command-line.

- **-p URL**, **--print=URL**

  This option is similar to -g / --get but it PRINTS the page it received  from the server.

  ```
    $ siege -p http://www.joedog.org/
    GET / HTTP/1.0
    Host: www.joedog.org
    Accept: */*
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (unknown-x86_64-linux-gnu) Siege/4.0.3rc1
    Connection: close
    HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
    Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:58:13 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
    Location: https://www.joedog.org/
    Server: cloudflare-nginx
    Connection: close
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
    <html><head>
    <title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
    </head><body>
    <h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
    <p>The document has moved <a href="https://www.joedog.org/">here</a>.</p>
    <hr>
    <address>Apache/2.2.31 (Amazon) Server at www.joedog.org Port 80</address>
    </body></html>
  ```

- **-c NUM**, **--concurrent=NUM**

  This option allows you to set the concurrent number of users. The total  number of users is technically limited to your computer's resources.

  You should not configure more users than your web server is configured  to handle. For example, the default apache configuration is capped at  255 threads. If you run siege with -c 1024, then 769 siege users are  left waiting for an apache handler.

  For this reason, the default siege configuration is capped at 255 users. You can increase that number inside siege.conf but if you make a mess,  then please don't complain to us.

- **-r NUM**, **--reps=NUM\|once**

  This option tells each siege user how many times it should run. The value  should generally be a number greater than zero but it may be the keyword 'once'.

  If --reps=3 then each siege user will run three times before it exits.  However, if --reps=once, then each user will run through the urls.txt  file exactly one time.

  For more information about the urls.txt file, see option -f \<file\>,  --file=\<file\>

- **-t NUMm**, **--time=NUMm**

  This option is similar to --reps but instead of specifying the number  of times each user should run, it specifies the amount of time each  should run.

  The value format is "NUMm", where "NUM" is an amount of time and the "m" modifier is either S, M, or H for seconds, minutes and hours. To run  `siege` for an hour, you could select any one of the following  combinations: -t3600S, -t60M, -t1H.  The modifier is not case sensitive,  but it does require no space between the number and itself.

- **-d NUM**, **--delay=NUM**

  This option instructs `siege` how long to delay between each page  request.  The value NUM represents the number of seconds between each one. This number can be a decimal value. In fact the default is half a second (--delay=0.5).

  The time between delay requests is NOT applied toward the transaction  time. If two 0.1 second transactions have a 2 second delay between them, their average transaction time is 0.1 seconds. It is applied toward the total elapsed time. In this scenario, the elapsed time would be 2.2  seconds.

  NOTE: when the parser is enabled (see: -p/--parser), there is no delay between the page and its elements, i.e., style sheets, javascripts, etc.  The delay is only between page requests.

- **-b**, **--benchmark**

  This directive tells siege to go into benchmark mode. This means there  is no delay between iterations.

- **-i**, **--internet**

  This option sets siege into what we call internet mode. It makes  requests from the urls.txt file (see: -f \<file\> / --file=\<file\>) in  random order.

- **-f FILE**, **--file=FILE**

  This option tells siege to work with a list of urls inside a text  file. The URLs are listed one per line. Unlike URLs that are passed as a command-line argument, the URLs in this file should not be quoted.

  `siege`'s urls.txt parser supports comments and variables. Since  `siege` uses the dollar sign ($) as a prefix for scalar variables, you should escape any variable you want to send to the server:

  ```
    https://$(HOST)/siege/jsoner.php POST {"price": "\$10 per mile"}
  ```

- **-R FILE**, **--rc=FILE**

  This directive allows you to set an alternative resource file. By  default, the siegerc file is `$HOME`/.siege/siege.conf With this  directive, you can override the default and use an alternative file.

- **-L FILE**, **--log=FILE**

  The default log file is `$prefix`/var/log/siege.log. This directive  allows you to specify an alternative file for logging.

- **-m "string"**, **--mark="string"**

  This option allows you to log a message to the log file before your  stats are written there. It is generally used to identify the  proceeding run. You could, for example, mark the file with your command-line parameters so it's understood what configuration  generated the following data.

- **-H "header: value"**, **--header="Header: value"**

  This options allows you to set a custom header in the request.  Generally speaking, this header will override an existing header. The Cookie header is a special case.  If you set -H "Cookie: value" then  siege will send that cookie in addition to the other ones.

- **-A "string"**, **--agent="string"**

  This option allows you to override the default user-agent with a custom  one.

  ```
    siege --agent="JoeDog Jr. in da hizzle"
  ```

  Will set this header:

  ```
    User-agent: JoeDog Jr. in da hizzle
  ```

  Alternatively, you could set the User-agent with the -H/--header option  above.

- **-T "text"**, **--content-type="text"**

  This is another set header shortcut. You use this option to override  the default Content-type request header.

- **--no-parser**

  Turn off the HTML parser. When siege downloads a page, it parses it for additional page elements such as style-sheets, javascript and images. It  will make additional requests for any elements it finds. With this option enabled, siege will stop after it pulls down the main page.

- **--no-follow**

  This directive instructs siege not to follow 3xx redirects.

## URL FORMAT

`siege` supports RFC 1738 URL formats but it takes pains to implement commonly used shortcuts for your convenience. In addition to RFC 1738  formats, siege introduces its own URL format to indicate protocol method.

An RFC 1738 URL looks like this:\
   \<scheme\>://\<username\>:\<password\>@\<hostname\>:\<port\>/\<path\>;\<params\>?\<query\>#\<frag\>

A `siege` URL with a method indicator looks like this:\
   \<scheme\>://\<username\>:\<password\>@\<hostname\>:\<port\>/\<path\> POST \<query\>

You can also post the contents of a file using the redirect character like this:\
   \<scheme\>://\<username\>:\<password\>@\<hostname\>:\<port\>/\<path\> POST \</home/jeff/haha.txt

Here are two examples with the `siege` method indicator:\
   http://www.joedog.org/ POST haha=papa&dada=mama\
   ftp://ftp.armstrong.com/ PUT \</home/jdfulmer/etc/tests/bbc.jpg

NOTE: If you set URLs with method indicators at the command-line, then  you MUST quote the thing or your shell will treat it like three separate arguments. If the URL is in a urls.txt file, then you shouldn't quote it.

As mentioned above, `siege` goes to great lengths to allow commonly  used shortcuts that you're used to from most browser implementations.  It treats many parts of the 1738 URL as optional. In this example, the  parts in brackets are optional:\
   \[scheme://\] host.domain.xxx \[:port\] \[/path/file\]

When `siege` receives a host name it builds the URL with default  assumptions.  www.joedog.org becomes http://www.joedog.org:80/

## URLS.txt FILE

From the section called Option Syntax above we learn that `siege`  can take a URL as an argument. `siege` -c -r2 www.joedog.org will  request the JoeDog index page twice.  But what if you want to hit large portions of the site? `siege` will allow you to fill a file  with URLs so that it can run through list.

The format for the file is one URL per line:\
   https://www.joedog.org/\
   https://www.joedog.org/haha/\
   https://www.joedog.org/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo

The file also supports UNIX-style commenting:\
   \# Comment looks like this\
   https://www.joedog.org/\
   https://www.joedog.org/haha/\
   https://www.joedog.org/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo

It supports shell-style variable declaration and references. This is  convenient if you want to run the same test on two different tiers or two different schemes:

```
  SCHEME=https
  HOST=bart.joedog.org
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/haha/
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo
```

You can tell siege about this file with the -f/--file option:\
   siege -c1 -r50 -f /home/jeff/urls.txt

## PERFORMANCE STATISTICS

When its run is complete, siege will gather performance data from all its clients and summarize them after the run. (You can also choose to log these numbers). The command-line output is modeled after Lincoln  Stein's torture.pl script:

```
  Transactions:                   2000 hits
  Availability:                 100.00 %
  Elapsed time:                  58.57 secs
  Data transferred:               5.75 MB
  Response time:                  0.25 secs
  Transaction rate:              34.15 trans/sec
  Throughput:                     0.10 MB/sec
  Concurrency:                    8.45
  Successful transactions:        2000
  Failed transactions:               0
  Longest transaction:            4.62
  Shortest transaction:           0.00
  Transactions
      This number represents the total number of HTTP requests. In this
      example, we ran 25 simulated users [-c25] and each ran ten times
      [-r10]. Twenty-five times ten equals 250 so why is the transaction
      total 2000? That's because siege counts every request. This run
      included a META redirect, a 301 redirect and the page it requested
      contained several elements that were also downloaded.
  Availability
      This is the percentage of socket connections successfully handled
      by the server. It is the result of socket failures (including
      timeouts) divided by the sum of all connection attempts. This
      number does not include 400 and 500 level server errors which are
      recorded in "Failed transactions" described below.
  Elapsed time
      The duration of the entire siege test. This is measured from the
      time the user invokes siege until the last simulated user
      completes its transactions. Shown above, the test took 58.57
      seconds to complete.
  Data transferred
      The sum of data transferred to every siege simulated user. It
      includes the header information as well as content. Because it
      includes header information, the number reported by siege will
      be larger then the number reported by the server. In internet
      mode, which hits random URLs in a configuration file, this
      number is expected to vary from run to run.
  Response time
      The average time it took to respond to each simulated user's requests.
  Transaction rate
      The average number of transactions the server was able to handle
      per second, in a nutshell: it is the count of all transactions
      divided by elapsed time.
  Throughput
      The average number of bytes transferred every second from the
      server to all the simulated users.
  Concurrency
      This is the average number of simultaneous connections. The metric
      is calculated like this: the sum of all transaction times divided
      by elapsed time (how long siege ran)
  Successful transactions
      The number of times the server responded with a return code < 400.
  Failed transactions
      The number of times the socket transactions failed which includes
      socket timeouts.
  Longest transaction
      The greatest amount of time that any single transaction took, out
      of all transactions.
  Shortest transaction
      The smallest amount of time that any single transaction took, out
      of all transactions.
```

## AUTHOR

`Jeffrey Fulmer, et al.` \<jeff@joedog.org\> is the primary author of `siege`. Numerous people  throughout the globe also contributed to this program. Their  contributions are noted in the source code ChangeLog

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright  by `Jeffrey Fulmer, et al.` \<jeff@joedog.org\>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the  Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your  option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU  General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along  with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,  675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

## AVAILABILITY

The most recent released version of `siege` is available by HTTP  download:\
   http://download.joedog.org/pub/siege

## SEE ALSO

[**siege.config**(1)](/siege.config/1.md) [**bombardment**(1)](/bombardment/1.md) [**siege2csv**(1)](/siege2csv/1.md)